So, you may or may not have noticed … but it appears my last blog got hacked. After spending way too much time trying to clean all that up I, well, I started wondering very seriously why I was working so hard to get that cleaned up. Folks, I love this blog. I love you…
Author: Joe Posnanski
Joe Posnanski writes about sports for a living, particularly baseball. Here, he writes about sports and also Springsteen, Hamilton, Harry Potter, iPads, infomercials, his idolization of Duane Kuiper, his family and magic. He lives in Charlotte with his wife Margo, two daughters Elizabeth and Katie, and their dog Westley. Joe is currently working on a book about Harry Houdini in today's world.
My Annual Gardy Rant
OK, so, it’s happening again … every year I feel more and more certain that there has to be something I’m missing. I had a long talk with someone close to the Minnesota Twins … this someone is the latest in a long series of people who want me to understand just how wrong I…
Keflex uses
There are two absolutely remarkable things happening in baseball this year … or anyway, I think they are remarkable. 1. The Seattle Mariners might be having the worst offensive season in baseball history … certainly in recent baseball history. 2. The Arizona Diamondbacks are definitely having the most fan-tastic season in baseball history. Both of…
The Jeter School of Acting
I’ve been after a good friend of mine to finally write a book he’s been thinking about for a long time: A book about sportsmanship. There are, of course, a lot of books about sportsmanship, many of them good ones. But my friend has a view I haven’t read much, a fascinating view. It isn’t…
The Human Element
At this point, you might know all about my various mixed feelings about instant replay in football — I’ve written about it enough. The good parts of instant replay are obvious and decisive — the NFL is using the best technology to get calls right more often. And there’s simply no way around that sort…
Why I Like WAR (with Poker talk)
OK, here’s a long and rambling essay I’ve pounded out about why I like Wins Above Replacement, not as the end-all, be-all*, but as a pretty good place to start when trying to figure out a player’s value. *”Be-all and the end-all” as phrase comes from Shakespeare, from MacBeth specifically, when MacBeth used to the…
Rafer Johnson and the Power of 10
First event: 100-meter dash Rafer Johnson came into the decathlon 50 years ago — at the 1960 Olympics in Rome — as the heavy favorite and the world-record holder. He got off to a bit of a rough start. There were three false starts in his 100-meter heat, and on the third he ran about…
Is That All I Did?
Bob Gibson smiles hard. It’s about to happen again. Over the years, Gibson has learned to tell when someone is about remind him how ferocious… heartless… intimidating he used to be. He has learned to brace himself for those peppy, ‘You were vicious!” compliments (they are compliments, right?) and the awed “You were a killer…
The Imperfect Game
There was something beautiful lost in the Jim Joyce fiasco, something that I hope I remember for as long as I remember the blown call. Yes, it’s hard to think about beautiful things when you have just watched one of the most absurd injustices in the history of baseball. But I’m a father of two…
John Wooden
Most people can live with the vague. For instance: What is success? Well, um, you know, um, there’s that old line about art: I know it when I see it. I know it when I feel it. Success is like that, right? I can’t quite put it into words what success means, and other things…